Here’s a scenario. You walk into a bar, wearing a Big Johnson shirt with a rip in it and Bermuda shorts even though it’s 45 degrees out. Your hair’s greased down to your head, not because of any fashion purpose. You just haven’t showered in days. When you get to the bar, this hot girl is standing there with two shots of Rumplemintz. She hands you one, clinks your glass and you down them. You guys go home together and your mother doesn’t once interrupt you by barging into your basement apartment. The next morning you wake up, wipe crusties out of your eyes and realize it wasn’t a hot girl but a girl that looks like Fred Armisen in a wig and she’s calling you, “Poopsie.” That hot girl that turned into Fred Armisen in a wig is Carlos Gonzalez.
Owning Carlos Gonzalez last year was crazy non-committal sex with the hot girl while she bought you drinks. You didn’t have to do anything special. Just lay there. Or, more specifically, just draft him late and watch him put up huge numbers. Only you should realize nothing is that perfect. As I said in the top 20 for 2011 fantasy baseball, “He swung at 37% of pitches outside the strike zone, the league average is 29.3%. He hacked at 52.2% of total pitches, league average is 45.6%. He took nearly no walks. With a .384 BABIP, everything dropped in for him.” And that’s me quoting me! If CarGo hacks again and balls don’t drop in, you’re going to have a slump on your hands. In 287 ABs away from Coors, he only had 8 homers. So to get to his huge season, he had to hit 26 homers in only 300 ABs at Coors. That’s 11.5 at-bats per homer. Babe Ruth has the 2nd best career number at 11.76. So, yeah, CarGo’s rate was pretty absurd. It was the 2nd most home homers in the majors last year behind only the insane Jose Bautista season. It was six more home homers than Adam Dunn, a guy who hits 38 to 40 homers every year. If a guy hits no homers away from home, it’s highly unlikely they can be successful every year. Finally, to take me completely out of the picture, Bill James gives David Wright the projections of 99/27/104/.295/20. He gives CarGo the projections of 101/28/101/.308/22. That’s basically the same thing. I hate to have to bring out the exclamation marks, but David Wright is a third baseman and he’s being drafted after CarGo! Seriously, dubya tee eff? Even if you think CarGo will be great again, which I have serious doubts about, people need to ease up on the throttle.
